Sandy's wake: 50 years of living simply washed away

Jul. 17, 2013

Kathryn Ward holds a photo recovered by family members. Every year, the family gathered for a group photo that would go into their Christmas card, this one from the summer of 1975. / Eileen Blass, USA TODAY

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TOMS RIVER — The two-story dwelling at 21 4th Ave. was not just a house to Joseph and Ellin Ward, their 11 children and 24 grandchildren.

It was an escape from the bustle of daily life in northern New Jersey, a vault for family relics, a matchmaking service and, for 50 years, witness to the big and small moments in the lives of the Wards.

The house that was a hub for the Ward children and their friends, that held up as more than 20 people shared two bathrooms and five bedrooms every summer for five decades and produced upward of 45 meals a day in the tiny kitchen, was no match for Superstorm Sandy.

The storm enveloped the shores of Normandy Beach with 20-foot waves and 80-mph wind gusts that drove oceanfront homes across the street into the Ward house, knocking it off its foundation. The front of the structure collapsed sideways, like a listing boat, while other parts were compacted or buried under other houses and mounds of sand.

For the Ward family, the loss of the ranch-style memory-maker was more than just the loss of brick and mortar. It was the loss of a lifestyle that hearkened to the Jersey Shore of yesteryear. Here, generations of the same families spent every summer in the same Shore town, and the children played every day in the same plot of sand by the water and visited the same ice cream shop every night. It was the loss of family history and memories that felt as though they were a part of the very structure

Thousands of families that lost homes to Sandy understand the depth of that loss.

The storm damaged at least 6,000 homes in the sections of this city that sit on the barrier peninsula across Barnegat Bay. Toms River Mayor Tom Keleher says about 450 homes were destroyed. Many were vacation spots that families visited for decades; others belonged to seniors who retired to live there year-round after spending summers vacationing with their families.

Ellin Ward, 86, lived in an upper-middle-class section called Normandy Beach. The matriarch of the Ward clan moved there full-time in 1994 after her husband died because this is where her family had always been happiest.

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“We had such a good time in that house,” she says.

Her life, her friends, her garden club and her church were in Normandy Beach.

Almost immediately after the storm, she decided she wanted to rebuild her house and go back. She had no flood insurance. Homeowner’s insurance paid her $4,100, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency gave her its maximum of $32,000. Building a house would take about $650,000, and construction could last a year.

Two questions weighed heavily: Could she afford it? And could she wait that long to go back?

'A FOCAL POINT' OF LIFE'

Ellin and Joseph Ward began taking their children to Normandy Beach in 1961 at the suggestion of family friends in Montclair, where they lived. They’d been married 10 years by then. Ellin was an elementary school teacher and Joseph a forensic engineer who would become internationally known for his work.

They rented a house the first couple of summers. Two years later, Joseph found the wood-shingle house on the corner of 4th and Ocean Terrace.

Ellin had just given birth to their 10th child.

Buying the house “was one of the smartest things we did,” she says. “It was very family-oriented. Normandy became a focal point for us.”

Ellin had the summers free, so they piled the clan into two cars to spend three months on the Shore.

She and Joseph made lifelong friends, as did their children. The roughly 2,000-square-foot home managed to hold their brood plus all of their buddies.

The siblings love to tell the story from back in the 1960s when a friend of a friend of one of the girls had no place to stay, so she spent the summer in the house, sleeping in the girls’ room. Their parents hadn’t a clue because so many children and teens were always running in and out.

“My parents purchased the house the same year I was born,” says child No. 10, Jane Anderson, 50. “I’ve never known life without that house.”

For each of the Ward children, who range in age from 45 to 60, the house held lasting memories of growing up. For Tom (No. 9), it was learning to surf in the waves across the street from the house. For Annie (No. 3), it was the thrill of standing by the wall in front of the house with her sisters and meeting cute boys. And for Bob, the youngest, it was the comfort of walking every night to O.W.’s ice cream shop for a mint chocolate cone

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The summer stays led to three marriages: Two of the boys and one of the girls met their future spouses at the beach. One of the grandchildren, Meg McMahon, 26, met her future fiancé in Normandy when she was a teen. They plan to get married next year in neighboring Point Pleasant.

The summer tradition continued, as she and her cousins came from across the country every summer, converging at “Nana’s.”

This year, McMahon says, will be just too sad. The debris is gone, but many collapsed houses haven’t been cleared.

“It is so wildly depressing to see the whole area like that,” she says.

MEMORIES FROM THE ATTIC

Few in the Ward clan expected the storm damage to be so complete, especially Kate Ward, 60, (No. 2) and Mary, 52 (No. 8). They both stayed to ride out the storm. Kate was in the family house as it collapsed. Mary was in her own home as water came rushing in. Both survived.

On the day after the storm, one of Ellin Ward’s sons told her, “There is good news and bad news. The good news is Kathy and Mary are safe. The bad news is you lost your house.”

In the following months, the siblings found items in the wreckage, often things they didn’t know their mother had, such as scrapbooks that held newspaper articles on historical events. The clippings included news about the shootings of President McKinley and later President Kennedy, the sinking of the Titanic and the progress of World War II. They found their late grandfather’s leather wallet, complete with his driver’s license, a pass for the New York City subway and his Amsterdam Democrat card.

“It was all stuff belonging to my dad, his dad and his dad’s dad, but it stopped with my dad until we found it on the beach,” Bob, 45, says.

Their mother had stored this world of memories in the attic.

Other items made their way to them through a decidedly 21st-century medium: Facebook. A group of volunteers picking up debris after the storm found diplomas and certificates belonging to their father, as well as photos of two siblings who had died. A treasured find was a stack of love letters Joseph Ward wrote to his wife during the first years of their marriage. He’d been away for several weeks at engineering camp; she was pregnant with their second child.

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She had tied up the letters -- handwritten on yellow and white legal paper and still in their envelopes -- with a ribbon and placed them in a shoe box.

The volunteers gave the items to two women who started a Facebook page called “Hurricane Sandy’s Lost Treasures” where they posted photos of personal items found after the storm. When pictures of the Wards’ items showed up on Facebook, one of the sisters, Jane in Idaho, contacted Mary in New Jersey.

Those memories guided Ellin Ward. In two conference calls in March and April with her children in New York, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., Idaho, Wisconsin and Nevada, she told them, “I want to go back.”

In March, they razed the house.

In May, she was still adamant that she was going back.

It has been easier to say than do. Her sons Jack and Joe, both contractors, spearheaded the rebuilding. They had an architect draw up plans for the new house, 13 feet above ground to meet the government’s new flood zone requirements. They applied for building permits.

“It’s been a struggle,” says Jack (No. 7). He says they tried to get a disaster relief loan from FEMA, but it wouldn’t cover the full cost of rebuilding.

Eight months after the storm, reality set in. When Ellin Ward began to worry about little things such as what type of doorknobs to pick for the house, she knew that this endeavor was becoming too much, and it was time to reconsider.

Late in June, she put the land on the market for $700,000.

She still wants to spend the rest of her life in the place that meant so many happy times for her family. Right now, she’s living in a retirement community in northern New Jersey, but she’s eyeing a house on the bay in Normandy Beach.

“She needs it,” daughter Annie McMahon says. “There are just so many memories all over Normandy Beach.”